


Dean...smash?

by theherocomplex



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crack, Gen, I have met the Egg Lady and she's a salty bitch, babby angels, bb!balthy, bb!cas, bb!gabe, bb!verse, my attempts at humor, vickjawn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2012-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/pseuds/theherocomplex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A curse has turned Castiel, Balthazar, and Gabriel into toddler versions of themselves. Sam decides to take them shopping, against Dean's better judgment. </p><p>Hilarity does not ensue. Pain and suffering, however, do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dean...smash?

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t help myself — I love the [bb!verse for Supernatural](http://askspnbbverse.tumblr.com/) that [vickjawn](http://vickjawn.tumblr.com) created, so I decided to write a little fic for it.

“I can’t believe we’re fucking doing this.”

“Don’t swear in front of the angels, Dean,” says Sam, who’s primly rereading his shopping lists. Lists. As in more than one. Dean gives him a look of actual, genuine despair, which Sam ignores in favor of angel-wrangling.

“Sit still, Balthazar, I have to strap you in.”

Balthazar goes limp in Sam’s arms and lets himself be strapped into one of the car seats they’ve arranged in a shopping cart. He’s wearing a long-suffering look that would be pitiable, if it wasn’t smashed onto a face about ten sizes too small for the emotion. Gabriel is already strapped in next to him, looking mutinous.

“In a lifetime full of humiliating moments,” Gabriel intones, staring blankly into the distance, “this may be the worst.”

“Most of your humiliating moments were your own fault, douchebag,” Dean grumbles, and feels a mean surge of satisfaction when Sam glares at him. “What? It’s true!”

“You just called a toddler a douchebag. In public.” Sam sighs. “Please, Dean, can we just get through this shopping trip without having child protective services called on us? Please?”

Dean sighs, but inwardly, he admits Sam is right. The last thing any of them need is to have to explain why there are three winged toddlers running around Bobby’s extremely child-unfriendly firetrap. He grunts, which could mean anything, not just agreement with his moose-brother, and grabs the cart handle. Castiel is sitting up front, as his reward for behaving himself on the way over. His trenchcoat is over his shoulders, hiding his wings, and he’s playing somberly with one of the sleeves.

Thank God at least he behaves, Dean thinks, and ruffles Castiel’ hair. Castiel looks at him, puzzled, because he still doesn’t understand physical affection, and Dean can see him filing away the sensation to analyze later.

Some things never change. Castiel is a nerd, no matter what size he is.

“Are we ready?” Sam asks, beaming hopefully at everyone. No one smiles back. He falters for a moment, looking lost, and Dean resolutely does not feel bad for him. This outing was Sam’s idea, as a way to give Bobby some time alone to “research” (specifically, to research some Wild Turkey without Balthazar stealing the bottle), and Dean is never going to forgive him for this. Never. He can handle Sam drinking demon blood, but shopping? With toddler angels?

This is one line that should never be crossed.

“Okay!” Sam hauls his smile back into place and grabs the other cart. Dean isn’t sure how he got stuck on angel-cart duty. “Let’s go!” Sam starts off across the parking lot, yelling over his shoulder like the world’s tallest tour guide.

“Okay, so we’ll hit Trader Joe’s first, then Target, and if we have time, we can — maybe we should go to Whole Foods instead of Trader Joe’s, it’s more expensive but the quality is —”

“ _No, Sam_ ,” Dean says, with feeling. If he has to handle yuppies, hipsters, and hippies, as well as angel toddlers, he is going to collapse in on himself like a dying star, crushed under the weight of his own loathing. “ _No_ Whole Foods. Are we even _related?_ ”

Sam looks hurt and stomps off, shoulders stiff, like casting aspersions on Whole Foods somehow wounds him personally. Gabriel catches Dean’s eye and mouths a “thank you” at him. Dean lets himself relax, just a little, and starts to believe that they may just get through this unscathed.

Oh, Dean.

***

“Oh my GOD. Oh my GOD. Am I actually seeing this? Oh my GOD. Is that a baby in a trenchcoat?”

Dean’s smile feels rubbery. “It is,” he grits out at the girl at the taste-test stand at Trader Joe’s, who’s looking at Castiel like he discovered electricity. Castiel, for his part, just blinks owlishly at her, which is his default reaction to anything confusing. Dean tries to steer the cart away, even though whatever she’s pulling out of the oven and putting into paper cups smells amazing. He’s blocked by a woman wearing a ski sweater over an orange linen dress, and — he hates this woman, he really does — bright green Crocs. She’s parked her cart in the exact middle of the aisle while she smells each carton of eggs.

“I’m not a baby,” Castiel says, frowning. “Physically, I’m a toddler, but mentally my faculties are —”

“Whoa there, big fella!” Dean yelps. “What did I tell you about — about —?” His voice fades out. The girl is staring at them, her eyes practically a blur as they move between Dean and Castiel. Dean feels the first surge of very real panic start to rise, and he can’t see Sam anywhere.

The asshole abandoned him. In Trader Joe’s. Dean wonders, briefly, if Sam isn’t secretly Lucifer’s vessel, despite what the averted Apocalypse would have him believe.

Dean smiles at the girl again, hoping the confusion he reads on her face isn’t turning into suspicion, but Egg Lady hasn’t moved and the girl is looking a little too closely at the tell-tale lumps of Castiel’s wings. Balthazar and Gabriel shift down in their car seats, trying to look as small as possible. Dean’s attracting a lot of stares, and there’s a telltale throb behind his eyes that promises a migraine of truly astonishing proportions in his near future.

“Uh, sir?” Dean tries not to close his eyes. He’s got nothing.

“Unca Dean?” He jumps and looks down at Gabriel, who’s giving him big doe-eyes and blinking sweetly at him. “Unca Dean, can I have a taste, pwease?” Gabriel makes gimme-hands at the fragrant little paper cups and smacks his lips.

The girl tears her eyes away from Castiel and fastens them on Gabriel, who gives her a trembling, too-sincere smile. “Of course you can, little man!” she says, beaming at him. “It’s a butternut-squash-almond-cranberry souffle! You’ll love it! How old are you?”

“I’m fwee,” says Gabriel, holding up four chubby fingers. It’s perfect: the little mistake, the way he’s smiling at the girl, how he kicks his feet a little in the car seat. The girl is entranced.

Dean is now indebted forever to a douchebag angel who is currently exploring new career opportunities as a toddler. And, because the douchebag-angel-toddler just saved his ass, he now has to hand-feed him pieces of souffle.

Of course, once Gabriel gets something, Balthazar wants it too, and even though Castiel will never ask, he’ll stare at Dean with illegally huge eyes and silently beg for it.

The girl smiles at Dean, all weirdness forgotten. “You’re so lucky to have these guys,” she whispers to him over the heat lamp as she hands him another round of souffle samples. “They’re _angels_.”

Dean starts choking on air. “Right. Perfect angels.” He has to restrain himself from mashing the souffle into Gabriel’s face, especially when he sees the smirk on the angel’s face. “They make my life complete,” he says, and smiles at the girl, who practically melts. Dean has never hated himself more.

Egg Lady has finally moved, and Dean makes his escape. He can see Sam in the distance, towering over everyone around him, and as he watches, his brother lifts up a carton of eggs and smells them.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he grumbles. Gabriel blows a raspberry at him.

 _Douchebag._

***

Dean manages to get Sam out of Trader Joe’s soon after that, but not before Sam loads the cart with things like _ciabatta_ and _kefir_ and _wild-caught salmon, previously frozen_. He did sneak in a few packages of what looked like chocolate chip cookies, as a thank-you for Gabriel, who grins and winks at him. Balthazar is asleep, or at least is pretending to be, and Castiel is gripping his souffle sample cup and looking at it longingly. Dean has an unpleasant flashback to Castiel’s Great Cheeseburger Caper, and decides that Castiel needs to be kept away from sample stands for the rest of — however long it takes to get him back to normal.

And then it’s on to Target. Sam disappears immediately, clutching his lists to his chest and resolutely ignoring Dean’s glares.

“So many colors,” says Castiel. He’s staring at the ceiling, right into the lights. “It’s beautiful.”

“Cas, don’t stare at the lights, you’ll go blind.” Castiel obediently looks down and fixes his eyes on one of the end-cap display stands. This one is made up of seven-dollar DVD specials, and Dean sees it just before the angels do.

Oh crap. He’s got to move, now, before the angels see —

“Is that — Homeward Bound?” Castiel asks. Balthazar chooses that moment to open his eyes, which immediately fill with tears. Gabriel and Castiel suck in simultaneous shaky breaths, and Dean has just long enough to pray for a convenient smiting before the angels _lose their collective feathered minds._

Dean’s been tortured, beaten, eaten, starved, stabbed, shot, and hit by a truck. He’s died, about a hundred times more than most people would consider reasonable. He’s been to actual Hell. And right now, he would do it all again with a smile on his face, because it turns out that the worst thing in creation is three toddler angels coming unglued about a golden retriever who fell into a hole.

“He got out! He was fine!” Dean is babbling but he can’t stop. “Shadow is fine! He got home!”

“ _Shadow fell in the hole, Dean!_ ” Gabriel wails. “ _He fell in the hole!_ ”

“ _He fell really faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!_ ” Balthazar looks like a boiled tomato, his jaw practically unhinging as he screams.

“ _Why did you make us watch that, Dean?_ ” Castiel is — oh God — pointing an accusing finger at Dean as the tears stream down his cheeks. “ _We trusted you to take care of us while we’re like this!_ ”

If Dean thought Trader Joe’s was bad, Target is an unmitigated disaster. People aren’t just staring, they’re pointing and snickering and boggling at him and his unhinged trio of unusually erudite toddlers.

 _This_ , Dean thinks, _is what doing drugs is like. If you took away every good thing about doing drugs._

“Guys, guys,” he says, holding up his hands, dimly aware that he’s trying to reason with toddlers. “ _Sam_ made you watch that.” Sam did no such thing, but if he’s not here to help Dean comfort the angels, then Dean has no trouble throwing the granola-eating monstrosity under the bus.

“ _Dean_.” Gabriel manages to regain enough control to look at Dean reproachfully, and Dean is damned if he will ever admit the tug of pity he feels for the archangel. Gabriel is a snotty, teary, sweaty mess, and he’s twice as pathetic as he has any right to be.

“Dean. Shadow _fell_. Into a _pit_.” Gabriel wipes his nose on his sleeve and Dean can’t help thinking about how that’s Gabriel’s last clean shirt. “Even you get why that’s _particularly_ traumatizing for us.”

Dean definitely understands why falling, literal or figurative, is so scary for angels, and he’s not completely unsympathetic, but he wishes the angels had chosen to have this particular meltdown at home. People are staring at him like he’s in the process of eating a baby, even though the worst of the storm has passed, and yet again, Sam is nowhere to be found.

“Yeah, Gabe, I get it.” Dean sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. The migraine is there, just under the boiling point, and he’s getting irritable. When he feels a hand on his arm, he nearly slaps it away, thinking it’s Sam’s. Then he sees the bright blue nail polish, and unless Sam just spent the last twenty minutes getting a manicure, Dean needs to dial down his aggression. He turns his head and sees a young woman smiling at him shyly.

“Hey, I don’t mean to interrupt when you’re clearly, uh, busy,” she says, as diplomatically as possible, “but I’ve got twins at home who’re about that age. It gets better, I promise.”

 _Lady, you have no idea what you’re talking about_ , he wants to snap, and just barely stops himself in time. “Yeah, thanks for that,” he says, with an attempt at a smile that she returns a little too warmly. Normally, he’d be all over that — she’s a little short, but she’s stacked and that is one hell of a smile. But she’s married, and instead of flirting, just a little, he has to arrange himself to block her from Gabriel’s view. The archangel has recovered admirably from his shit fit, and is now trying to ogle the woman’s cleavage. The last thing Dean needs is to explain why a three year old is not only speaking in three-syllable words but visually undressing women.

“Just stay strong — they’re handsome little guys. Give it a year and they’ll be completely different.”

“I hope so,” says Dean, with so much feeling that she takes a step back. _In a year, they’d better be their usual full-grown assholes selves, or I will light myself on fire._

She blinks, then smiles again. “A word of advice? Take them to the toy aisle. They just got in the new Avengers toys — my boys love the Loki action figures.”

“Loki is the best,” says Gabriel, still craning his head to see around Dean. Balthazar huffs.

“No, you’re not biased at all. Even though Loki gets _literally_ smashed by the Hulk —”

“Is this to what you’re referring when you say ‘Hulk Smash’ and then punch Dean in the kneecap?” asks Castiel, whose nerdery does not extend to Marvel Comics. The woman looks at the angels, wide-eyed, and Dean takes the moment to slide past her, waving cheerfully.

“Thanks for the advice you take care now have a good one!” She waves back, looking a little concussed, and Gabriel wiggles his eyebrows at her.

“Did you see the —”

“Don’t start,” growls Dean. “ _Do not start_. Or I will end you, toddler or not.”

***  
A half hour later, they’re arguing over whether or not Iron Man would beat Thor in a real fight. Dean is Team Iron Man, because Tony Stark is fuckin’ awesome. Castiel is loyally supporting him, even though he has no idea what an Avenger is, except in an absolute sense. Unsurprisingly, Gabriel is Team Thor, because his obsession with Chris Hemsworth knows no bounds. Balthazar attempts to moderate, but in the end his obvious crush on Black Widow wins out and the argument is steadily getting louder when Sam clears his throat at the end of the aisle.

“Having fun, Dean?” Sam has the audacity to look put-upon, like he’s the one with the really exhausting responsibilities. His cart is full of toilet paper, socks, shampoo, and pens — all the detritus of domesticity that Dean hates, that Dean _does not_ allow, but it’s hard not to feel a little rush of affection when he sees the packages of kids’ t-shirts that he and Sam will painstakingly modify later, when the angels are asleep, to leave holes for their wings.

“Tons of fun, Sammy,” he replies, not looking at his brother. “Just waiting for you to finish your errands.”

Balthazar snickers and Sam sighs. “I’m ready when you are, Dean.”

“Dean?” He glances down to see Gabriel looking longingly at a pair of Hulk Hands. “Please?”

It’s a horrible idea — possibly in his top three worst ideas of the past year, which includes almost saying yes to Michael and taking Castiel to a brothel (which, in his defense, turned out to be _hilarious_ ) — but Dean drops the Hulk Hands into Sam’s cart, because he can’t resist seeing the terrified look on Sam’s face.

They’ll pay for it later, probably when they’re just about to fall asleep, but he’s too pleased with himself to care.

He gets an Iron Man mask for Castiel, who has no idea what to do with it, and a pair of Widow’s Bite bracelets for Balthazar. But it’s the Hulk Hands that make Sam splutter and complain all the way through the checkout line and out to the car.

And it’s Sam who gets walloped in the head with them, all the way home, not Dean.

Even Castiel giggles, just a little.

***

“Dean?”

“Mhm.”

The door to his bedroom swings open, letting in just enough light from down the hall to let him see that it’s Balthazar and Gabriel crawling into bed with him. He sighs and shifts over to give them room. Their wings brush against his arms, smelling of dust and ozone and something else, something sweet and a little wild — a last remnant of heaven, maybe.

They nestle against him, tiny bundles of bones and skin and warmth, and he rolls onto his back so he can have one on either side.

“Dean?”

“Gabriel, you know the rules. If you guys wanna sleep with us, you gotta be quiet.”

“I know but —” Gabriel’s voice is serious, and Dean cracks open one eye. Gabriel is worrying at his lip, frowning at Dean’s armpit. He jostles the angel lightly.

“Out with it, man. You need your beauty sleep.”

“It’s just — what if we don’t change back?” On Dean’s other side, Balthazar breathes out a sigh and shivers. “What if we’re like this forever?”

It’s something Dean’s considered. Angels live forever, and there’s been no change in their apparent age in the months since the curse took hold. There’s a definite possibility that, barring an actual Act of God (and Dean doesn’t trust the bastard, not one bit), the angels may be stuck as toddlers for all eternity.

It’s not a pleasant thought for Dean. It must be torture for the angels.

So he does what any adult does, confronted with a child’s fears: he gives a half-answer and tries to sound like he believes it.

“We’ll figure out a way to break it. If only so I don’t have to deal with your feathered asses forever.”

Gabriel nods and curls tighter against Dean’s side. The angels’ breathing is slow and deep, and Dean slips under a few minutes later.

***

He hopes the crunch isn’t loud enough to wake them. It’s not his fault. They shouldn’t have left it there.

But the angels have ears like fucking bats, and almost before Dean has a chance to survey the damage, Gabriel and Balthazar are howling out from under the covers.

_“You broke it you broke it you broke it you broke it you broke it you broke it you broke it!”_

Dean looks down at the wreckage underfoot, all green foam and crushed electronics, and smiles helplessly at the angels.

“Dean…smash?”

***

Five minutes later, Dean is driving back to Target.

Yep, worst idea of the year.

**Author's Note:**

> The Egg Lady really is a salty bitch.


End file.
